Walking to St. Agatha

Sorrento is on a peninsula that rises up about 1000 feet (just guessing, I’ll check later) from Sorrento to the peak and then down again on the southern side which is the Amali Coast. I hiked up to the high point which is a town called St. Agatha. I started out from Sorrento center and within 3-4 blocks I was on one of the little lanes which are all over Sorrento and most Italian towns. Here is the one I was walking on:

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This is a street, a few cars and several scooters passed me as I walked up. The lane has high walls and goes by houses. Most houses have lemon and/or orange trees. Here is a yard that had some nice flowers;

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My camera wanted to take a picture of my belt camera case which is really its home so I indulged it.

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Now I am about half way. Here is a view back at Sorrento. That is Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

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It is more of a trail now. No walls so you can see into people’s gardens. I saw one guy doing his spring rototilling.

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Now it changes to an actual footpath, scooters not allowed. The St. agatha sign reassures me since my map was not accurate.

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You go right by people’s houses. This dog followed me for a while then pushed the gate open to this house.

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the footpath was quite steep. Even with my 5000-ft New Mexico-enhanced red blood cells I was getting pretty tired by this time.

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I was kind of hoping I was closer to St. Agatha but you can see I was only 2/3 of the way. You can also see what kind of shoes I wore for the walk.

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Now I am 80% of the way I guess. I turned and saw the sign directing me back to Sorrento. The guy in the sign looked so casual and jaunty “Oh I guess I’ll just pop down to Sorrento and back on these steps.”

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Almost to the top, back on a regular street, these houses have nice views.

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Finally I get to St. Agatha which is another town, smaller than Sorrento but with houses and stores, and, I was glad to see, a little place to get a bottle of water for 40 euro cents. Here is the view from a street in St. Agatha.

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Now I’m on the way down. Here are a couple of nice scenes. It took me about a hour to go up and about 40 minutes to go back down. I started at 3:45 and got back about 5:30.

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